


The Bullets We Take, The Healing We Claim

by Vendetta23



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Bondage, CACW, Captain America Civil War Spoilers, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Depersonalization, Depressin, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multiple Personalities, PTSD, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Past Violence, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Steve and Bucky - Freeform, Steve and Bucky BDSM, Stucky - Freeform, Trauma, Trust Issues, Trust Kink, bucky recovery, catws, stucky angst, winter soldier recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:11:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6869899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vendetta23/pseuds/Vendetta23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR SPOILERS]</p>
<p>The Soldier went into a cryo sleep, but did the Man wake up from it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wake Up

“It’s ok” Steve whispered in the dark “It’s me, I’m...” he interrupted his sentence while standing up and trying to reach the door without stumbling on anything “I’m sorry, I’ll leave”

“Don’t” Bucky’s voice was tired and seemed to fade away within the walls of the hospital room, but it was decisive. Steve froze by the door, fingers brushing on the door handle while trying to make up his mind weather it would be best for Bucky if he stayed or if he left and let him have some sleep. Steve decided to stay, shaking his head while asking himself why on earth the idea of leaving his best friend on that room crossed his mind.

“Okay” Steve returned slowly to the chair he was sat on before Bucky woke up, the old piece of furniture creaked as he let his weight recline uncomfortably on it. The room was immersed in silence once again, as if it was every night since Bucky was taken out of the cryo sleep and transferred into it while he naturally recovered until he was ready to wake up. Bucky had his first awakening four days after he was taken out of that machine that terrified Steve, T’Challa reassured Steve that they had done everything within their reach to identify and eliminate Hydra’s mental program from Bucky’s brain, but _‘everything within their reach’_ was just not enough for Steve, and he could barely sleep during these four gloomy nights because T’Challa’s words were still hammering in his brain _‘Everything we did was extremely delicate in order to not mess with his mind more than it’s already messed, but there could still be sequels’_. Steve guarded Bucky’s sleeping soul for four long nights only imagining what would be like when he woke up, every possible scenario had crossed his mind, that his friend would open his eyes and sit on the bed like a machine and ask for orders, that he would not remember Steve or everything they have been through or worst, that he would not wake up at all. At 5 AM of the fourth night, Bucky opened his eyes. Steve’s body had finally given up and he was sleeping on the chair by the headboard and Bucky knew it was him who was breathing so softly by his side, he found it strange that Steve’s breaths were not interrupted every ten seconds so the man at his side would soon forcibly arch for air as it was when he was a little boy in Brooklyn spending nights awaken because of his asthma. That was the only thing Bucky remembered of home that night, so he could not find the peace or the tiredness to sleep until it was morning and Steve woke up abruptly because a sunbeam had broken through the blinds and was then caressing his face, and froze when their eyes met. For an instant that seemed to last an eternity, the soldier abstracted from all the chaos that set fire to his mind, all the details of the room he was in – first step for when you are captured by the enemy, special recognition –, all the sounds that he captured from inside and outside – a waterfall – and the tensed muscles – flesh and metal – waiting for an attack. On that instant, the only thing that existed was Steve, because Bucky was torn apart so many times that he didn’t feel like his mind or body were even real anymore. A great silent empty surrounded Steve at Bucky’s eyes, and, for Steve, great pain filled the room around Bucky.

“Bucky” Steve watched uncomfortably while his friend turned his eyes down to the ground and stopped himself as he felt a torrent of questions being violently thrown from his throat to the back of his teeth. Steve wanted to grab Bucky by his shoulders and ask him about everything, _‘What do you remember?’, ‘What did they do to you?’, ‘How did you feel when I bailed on you on our first baseball game to go home cry because I had taken another beat at school?’_ and _‘Do you remember me?’._ But Steve kept the questions to himself, they would help him ease his spirit, but would not help Bucky right then. The Soldier kept quiet, the tension ate up the room around him, exhaling from his body like a dark smoke.

“You’re safe, we took you out of the cryo sleep, we are in one of T’Challa’s facilities” Steve mumbled while feeling his mouth dry out, he squinted to try to have a better vision of Bucky’s expression, but failed as his friend seemed to hide himself behind his long hair. Steve couldn’t know the hell that was breaking through the walls of Bucky’s mind, he was feeling everything he couldn’t feel for seventy years, he was scared, terrified, he felt lonely, tired, sad, all at the same time and his heart was threatening to jump out of his chest.

“What have they done to me?” the soldier asked, his voice seemed to be as wounded as he was.

“They…” Steve moved inches forward on his chair and Bucky flinched, he stopped as he felt the shame crumbling above him “They fixed you” Steve hoped his words were true, he hoped he could promise Bucky nothing would hurt him anymore, coming from either outside or inside him. They both got silent, the Sun was stretching its rays inside the room, the ones that could make it through the curtains, as Bucky was trying to make it through his own panic.

“No, they didn’t” Bucky turned around facing the wall on the other side of the room from where Steve was. Suddenly, the mighty Captain America had no clue how to fix something, or bravery to carry on. Bucky’s back was all he could see, as well as his own defeat. The noises didn’t bother Bucky anymore, they were secondary to what he was _feeling_ then, he was feeling _things_ and he didn’t know how to handle it. Feelings are not bullets to be dodged, they can be domesticated with intensive torture and training to become a weapon, but the volume of shouting of the instructors in Bucky’s head, the commands, the punishing, was getting lower as something new flooded his head. Something warm ran down the soldier’s face and he brought his hand up only to feel what it seemed to be a tear. Bucky curled his body, sank his face into the soft pillow and screamed as loud as he could.

During the afternoon, some idiotic doctor thought he had to right to knock Bucky down with drugs, but was kicked out of the room as soon as Steve realized what he was doing

“Don’t you dare to do that” he shouted as the doctor started running towards the door “Don’t you fucking dare” Steve was the only one screaming as Bucky’s voice had started to hoarse, he sank deeper into the pillow. Bucky didn’t sleep or eat during the rest of the day, he just kept staring at the white celling as every second he was in that state cut Steve deeper into his chest. Bucky was feeling incomplete, but more complete than he was when he still had that arm, the emptiness at his side was the opposite of empty, it was filled with gratitude for not carrying anymore something it was time for him to let go. If he had woken up still with the metal arm, he might as well have ripped out the limb himself.

 

* * *

 

 “It’s ok” Bucky didn’t remember falling asleep, much less waking up “It’s me, I’m… I’m sorry, I’ll leave” he heard Steve’s voice in the dark.

“Don’t” Bucky didn’t know why he said that, but the fear he felt when Steve stood by the door as if he was leaving was trying to tell him something. He knew Steve thought about leaving from the interminable seconds he stood there, stripped from action. The soldier tried to relax his muscles as he felt the other man sit by his side, but he could not for one second let his guard down. _‘I am sorry’_ he thought and almost said, but the words found themselves stuck in his throat. They both returned to silence.


	2. Sleepless Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky are silent, the hospital room is too small to hold all the memories of the past and the expectiation from the future.

                Neither Steve nor Bucky closed their eyes shut for more time than it is necessary to blink on that night. Steve was too aware of what the noises from outside did to Bucky, whose muscles flinched every time he heard the sticks of the trees balancing in the wind or a car completing its patrol around the facility, and Bucky was too aware of Steve’s breaths getting heavier each time Bucky reacted to a sound. The tension in the room was pilling up as if it was to compete its height with Stark Tower’s.

                Tony. Yeah, Tony crossed the captain’s mind from time to time, Steve felt like he shouldn’t be angry, instead he felt like he should be mortified with the way things escalated. Just yesterday he was a kid drowning by his lungs and now, now he still finds himself gasping for air during sleepless nights just as much as he was 90 years ago because the feeling that the world wanted to bury him wouldn’t go away. The difference was that Bucky wasn’t singing him to sleep anymore. It weren’t Bucky’s dreamy eyes that kept Steve awake at night, but the horrifyingly empty eyes that aimed the camera that was recording on December 16, 1991, just before the soldier put a bullet on it. Seeing Bucky’s eyes so lifeless was carving nightmares on Steve’s mind, each haunted night he faced something different but all equally terrifying, they have gotten worse since Bucky was taken out of the cryo sleep. On the first night, Steve dreamed that he was back on his room on Brooklyn during a gloomy morning, walls covered in sketches, his lungs were practically making him choke on blood and his voice couldn’t leave his throat to call for help, it was like his mother or Bucky weren’t even there, like they had never existed at all. The second night Steve woke up covered in sweat and couldn’t – nor tried to – recall what he was dreaming about. On the third night the captain found himself suited up after falling asleep, holding his shinny shield in what it seemed to be a good dream, but it all broke down when he was captured and strapped to a chair by dark and confusing figures – they seemed one but they were _everywhere_ – and his mind was torn apart before he was set loose in a world he was now programmed to destroy, in which there was a man – he knew him – he was ordered to kill. On the fourth night, just before Steve woke up - a sunbeam was caressing his face – to find Bucky’s eyes meeting his, he was dreaming that Bucky had a gun and the weight of all those missions on his shoulders, he pointed the gun to his head and Steve couldn’t stop him from pulling the trigger.

                Neither Steve nor Bucky could find the strength to break the silence, the minutes ticking on the clock were each one longer than those seventy years they were kept apart from each other. Bucky’s eyes were wide open, that same shadows that had hid him from harm all the times his leash was loosened by Hydra’s hands and he was set on a killing spree – a deadly silence – seemed now to be hiding ghosts.

                Bucky, oh, the _things he had done_ , they were crushing him from above, he could almost hear the sound of his ribs cracking under the weight, but he endured it in silence, laid still in the bed as a dead man should be so Steve wouldn’t notice the crippling pain that came with the memories. The memories, a shitload of images, unreachable sensations lost in a sea of blood, they flooded his mind an execution at a time. ‘ _No, please!_ ’ a woman shouted while he tossed her aside and pointed the gun at a baby crib, outside the apartment the Sun was shining as it almost never does in Russia’s coastal cities. The gun fired and the woman screamed so painfully the soldier found himself lost in what it seemed to be flashbacks of a war he didn’t recall having a part in, but the machine came to itself again and soon it was returning to the hands of the commander a file that had a single page with an address, in which there were then only a fainted woman on the floor and a bloody crib. Bucky remembered _all of them_.

                The two men were in silence in the room, but they weren’t there at all, their minds floating somewhere between a dark past and a cursed future.

“When you tried to win that teddy bear for that redhead, Dolores…” Steve began to talk, watching closely Bucky’s figure in the bed but still having his eyes wonder as if they were trying to capture a glimpse of a warm past “I felt happy that you weren’t able to hit the target with the ball, happy that we lost all our money on that tent, that you realized how disappointed she looked before she took off, and happy that we had to go home alone in the middle of that freezing night so the next morning my lungs were hurting so much you skipped work to spend the day taking care of me” Steve’s face got numb “But I was happy as well that you didn’t hear me crying at bedtime because I realized how selfish I…”

“I did hear you” Bucky’s murmur came to life as music to Steve’s ears, the man’s figure continued laid still in bed, darkness hiding everything there was to be looked at – and to Steve that was painful “But I didn’t crawl to your bedside because I was being tore apart in tears as well” Bucky’s face lightened up with a half-smile that Steve couldn’t see.

“W-what?” Steve straightened up on the chair.

“It was a living hell, the boys were talking, so I had to do something” Bucky’s smiled died halfway through “But, damn, I didn’t know what was wrong with me, she was beautiful, stunning actually, but I couldn’t fix the fact that I couldn’t see her the way I saw…” he made a pause and finally turned his head towards Steve, eyes still facing the ground “you”. It all came to life now, feelings long forgotten, bottled up inside his chest, feeling that made him believe that he was a freak, something that couldn’t be fixed and oh, _the boys talked_. They exchanged a quick glance at each other; Steve felt like he was blushing and Bucky didn’t feel like his bones were as cold as they were moments before. The soldier couldn’t realize he was getting his humanity back, but he was now asking himself if that was what Steve meant when he said that the doctors tried to help. The pain was not so painful anymore, and the warm feeling was only growing.

                Steve slowly got up on his feet, approaching carefully his best friend. Bucky did everything he could not to flinch at Steve’s touch, after all those years any kind of contact can easily become a whip under the weight of everything he went through, but it was Steve, he was safe; Bucky could fucking burn all the thick walls that outgrew him if it was for Steve to get in, and, at that moment, that was what he promised himself he would do or die trying. Bucky returned the firm grip, flesh to flesh, no metal between their hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, hi people! I wanted first to apologize for any wrong use of the english language since it's not my mother tongue. Second, I hope that you are enjoying the fic............ Yeah, I suck at these notes, I'm sorry. Anything you want to say, leave a comment, thank you :D
> 
> (and let out ships navegate freely and wonderfully on the sea <3)


	3. Too Much of a Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky was smashing gummy bears between his fingers, Steve didn't know what to say, an old question he had when he was a child came up to his mind, was it too much of a sin to think about a boy's lips?

“Yeah, you show them” Steve’s shy smile tried to hide the sad look in his eyes, he had just made and effort to turn the situation they were in in a more bearable one. Bucky’s fingers had just smashed a red gummy bear in between them using a strength that did not allow the jelly to return to its original form, and then lined up the shapeless figure in a colorful row formed by other crushed bears. The nurse had brought the breakfast at 7 in the morning, the skinny man recalled Steve of himself a long time ago, but right after the young lad put the tray on the table next to Bucky’s bed, Steve ceased to identify with him as his pace fastened to get him out of there as soon as possible. Bucky’s eyes were glued on the nurse’s back until he left the room, leaving behind tensed muscles in all of Bucky’s body and an even sadder look in Steve’s eyes because the captain had never been a coward, and being afraid of Bucky was unthinkable. Now it was 11 am and the soldier – because that was who he seemed to be then, face washed clean of emotion by apathy – was still playing with the food, the gummy bears were all smashed, the cup of coffee was left untouched, the ham sandwich, once smoking hot, was now cold and the apple was the only thing that attracted the soldier’s attention. Steve had never seen an apple so vividly red in his entire life, not even when he felt like the trees grew higher and more beautiful and the colors were shinier, seventy years ago. However, at the end it seemed that all came down to a cold hospital room, an ex-killing machine raging on jelly bears and Captain America feeling like an asthmatic and lost child once again.

                Bucky dismissed Steve’s comment, somewhere in his heart he knew that his friend was trying his best to avoid the elephant in the room in hope that it would make things better, but what it did was exactly the opposite. Bucky stared to the jelly bears for more than ten minutes, his chest felt way too tight to hold whatever he had inside, an acute pain was starting to flourish when he realized that the feeling that was practically pouring out his pores was anger.

“My mother could never take me to the hospital as a kid” Bucky’s voice was hoarse, Steve quickly shifted his attention from the dark bear parade to his friend’s face “Now I know how it would be like”. Bucky wanted to talk, let something out, but he didn’t know what it was, he felt like he was dumbly trying to reach out to something in the back of his mind, to understand why his chest felt that way but he felt somehow rusted. Steve understood Bucky’s discomfort, in the moment that pack of bears came into the room he knew that was a bad idea, the facility didn’t know what to do with Bucky, so they treated him as a child instead of a grown man whose memories and life were reaped out from his hands. Steve had seen how the doctors looked at Bucky when he was asleep, they feared his unconscious body to the guts, to them he was never a person, he was a mass destruction weapon stationed inside their working place, so they gave him gummy bears to maybe ease their worries, to treat him like he was less scary, like he was able to be manipulated like a child. _Stripped of choice_. That’s how Bucky felt, but still he had no clue that the gummy bears were producing this kind of effect on him, his nerves were made of steel to endure battle but now they were all like hyper sensitive wires stripped bare of their protection and, to Bucky, that perspective was terrifying.

“Let me throw those away” Steve approached the table next to Bucky’s bed way to quickly, guilt flooded his veins as he watched his friend flinch in his bed “I’m sorry, I really am” Steve slowly grabbed the tray and tossed the food into the garbage can next to the door, but Bucky felt more ashamed than he did. It’s not that Bucky was seeing things, hearing explosions that blew up battlefields decades ago or having impulses to kill everything in his sight, it was worse, he knew that it was only Steve and him in the room and that they were safe from outside enemies, but he was _still_ afraid.

“Hey Buck” Steve turned on his heels and walked – _slowly_ – to the table to return the tray “Everything is going to be better, we always find a way through things, together”. Bucky’s stomach seemed to curl up in a ball, he was expecting Steve to say that he would be with him to the end of the line and felt so glad that he didn’t. Bucky didn’t want Steve to say that he would stay with him to the end of it, because he predicted that the end would be bloody, that he, with the ticking bomb that his brain carried, would snap once again, hurt Steve once again, and God knows where he would stop, which line was the last one to be crossed before Steve give up for good. Bucky did not believe that Steve would ever stop, but Bucky also hoped that he would eventually, for his own sake, give up.

“When are you gonna give in” Bucky’s voice was tired, he rested his head on the pillow, turned it to the other side, leaving Steve’s eyes with nowhere to rest on his friend’s face.  Steve felt like he was crumbling down, unable to keep all the parts inside him glued together. So that was what Bucky expected of him, that he would leave, Steve thought.

“Sorry, not gonna happen” Steve laughed it off to deflect the subject, his mind was running a thousand miles per second, afraid that Bucky would run away, leave him all alone again, he felt a shiver going up his spine. Steve looked at Bucky as if he wanted him to promise, but Steve knew that was not in his friend’s control. And that saddened him so bad… Steve hated to admit to himself that, if he knew who the man lying in front of him was, things would be easier. But the man wasn’t. He was not the same Bucky he knew growing up, he was not the same friend that held his head during cold nights when the asthma attacks hurt so bad the next day Steve wouldn’t have any more tears to cry, he was not the same man that saved his life over and over again in the battlefield, not the same one whose gazes used to make Steve wonder if it was too much of a sin to think about a boy’s lips. But Bucky didn’t need to be the same, and Steve knew it, but he couldn’t help but ask himself quietly, secretly, if he could go through all of this without the man he once knew.

Bucky was also secretly begging, begging to Steve to believe it was _him_ , to believe he had control of his brain or at least that he was fighting his way through a sea of what it seemed to be impossibilities, to trust that he was doing the best he could to be Bucky once again. In the back of his mind he suppressed the question, ‘ _but am I still the same?_ ’. Bucky blinked three times straight when he realized he was moving his mouth.

“Was I thinking out loud?” his eyes widened.

“You were mumbling something but it was incomprehensible” Steve smiled, he hid that he could figure out one word from Bucky’s whispering sentences, ‘believe’. And that hit Steve like a train – maybe this is not the most suitable metaphor, given everything –, because he realized that he was being unfair, he was being a coward, running from a fight that was the only reason he was alive right now and because of which he would stay alive from that moment on. He needed now to, above everything, believe Bucky was standing at his side, that he wasn’t going anywhere, like it has always been. Steve knew his thoughts were turned erratic by fear, he needed to set his mind straight.

“Kiss me” Bucky split the air and Steve’s train of thought with a razor. Steve felt like his blood was trying to leave his body through his face,  but was unable to, so instead it just piled up inside his cheeks, if Steve could look at himself in the mirror he would finally see something as red as that apple from breakfast.

“What?” Steve’s voice could barely leave his throat, his eyes were locked in Bucky’s gaze, _‘was it too much of a sin to want to touch a boy’s lips?’_.

“If you don’t want to it is…” Bucky felt his heart shrinking in the verge of what he thought was rejection, way more painful than all the ones he receives from women. And he thought he knew torture…

“I do” Steve’s hands were trembling, he gave a step towards the hospital bed, Bucky seemed to be hiding under the white covers, what was left of his left arm totally covered. Bucky froze, as if he was taking a time reminding himself how to breathe, and finally he stretched his hand to Steve, it was shaking as bad as Steve’s and Bucky found it strange, his hands used to be still as metal. Steve got closer, holding Bucky’s hand. If a touch became a whip in Bucky’s mind, a kiss would feel like if he was being electrocuted, beaten up like a dog, humiliated and stripped from humanity once again. He held still, _‘Steve is not gonna hurt me, stop shaking’._

                Steve got closer, not sure of what to do, how not to startle Bucky, remembering that he had gotten the worst of what a touch can become. However, it was Bucky that leaned forward, sitting on his bed and leaving his left shoulder bare, it seemed infected. Bucky’s mouth could never taste bad, even after months of cryo sleep, it was somehow bitter, Steve thought, Bucky’s lips carried all the rainy nights they spent together watching the water drops falling down through the window, all the bad dreams that woke up Steve soaked on sweat, they carried the promise that Steve needed. To Bucky, at first Steve’s lips felt strange, like if the men were doing something wrong and he could almost feel the flames of hell warming up his skin, as the teacher used to describe – _she knew the boys talked_. So Bucky decided to close his eyes, maybe the shivers would stop, maybe his heart would settle down, he was so energetic only because his body was telling him to run or fight, and he didn’t want to do either. Bucky wanted to stay, he wanted to feel calm, and Steve’s lips tasted like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank everyone who is reading this, you make me carry on with this story :D


End file.
